And yet, before he wakes up, Bernard Lagat has extricated himself from his subconscious predicaments, and emerged victorious once again. "I always come out the winner," he says. "Always." Lately, reality has mirrored the dreamworld, as Lagat has emerged as perhaps the best middle-distance runner in the world, a claim given increased credence by his 1500/5,000m double victory in last August's world championships in Osaka.

That twin triumph has set almost unreasonable expectations for a repeat in Beijing this summer, but Lagat seems unfazed, approaching his craft with an almost Zen-like calm, secure in the knowledge that if he does the training, he's ready to let the race play out to its ultimate conclusion as it has hundreds of times in his mind before.

"When I'm racing I'm relaxed, because my head has already done the work the night before," he explains. "I almost feel like I'm watching someone else, like I'm not really in my body. Whatever happens in a race, I always have a lot of options for the situations I've imagined.

"It doesn't help to visualize a perfect race," he continues, contradicting the advice of legions of sports psychologists. "It's better to play out the bad situations in your mind, and figure out a way out of them. No matter what, I'm ready for it."

That same statement might be applied to Lagat's life, which has taken him from a small village in the highlands of Kenya to a comfortable lifestyle in a gated community in Tucson. Lagat, with his gold-burnished image, is a poster boy for Nike and USATF, and one of the brightest hopes for bringing home more metal from Beijing. But the trip to this point, like the races in his dreams, hasn't been without incident and intrigue.

A Sister's Guidance

Lagat grew up in the small village of Kaptel in Kenya's Rift Valley, and, like most boys in that wellspring of endurance athletes, began running at an early age. "It was just something we did," Lagat says. He was on course toward an ordinary life when, during his sophomore year in secondary school, his sister Mary, seven years his senior, admonished him to get serious. "She told me, 'I've seen you run -- you can be good,'" he recalls. The second-oldest of the 10 children in Lagat's family, Mary had represented Kenya in the Commonwealth Games and world cross country championships, but gave up her athletic dreams to work and support her family, even paying Lagat's school fees. "Coming from her, it really made an impression," he recalls. "She's been my role model, in running and life -- I would never want to disappoint her."

After a modest high school career, in 1994, right before Lagat graduated, he managed to stay with the legendary Daniel Komen over 5,000m at the provincial championships. "Right after that he turned pro and started running crazy times in Europe," Lagat says. In spite of the temptation to follow suit and go for fast times and big money, Lagat's road took a different turn. "I wanted academics from the first," he says.

Once again, it was Mary who provided the impetus. She showed Lagat the papers from Iowa offering her a scholarship, which she'd turned down to work for Kenya Power and Lighting Co. "She must have seen something in me," Lagat says, "like, 'This guy is going to do so much, he is the one I have to help in the family.' If not for her I would have quit high school and joined the army."

Instead, he found himself at Jomo Kenyatta University outside Nairobi, running under the guidance of coach Nganga Ngata. "He was the first person to give me a definite schedule of workouts," Lagat recalls. "Until then, I didn't even have a watch." Nganga was also adept at guiding many runners to American colleges, including Washington State.

"My friend, Eric Kamau, had gone there the year before," says Lagat. "For a Kenyan, the most important thing is to be someplace where you have friends, so I knew I would like it at WSU." Based on his 3:37 1500m PR at the 1996 Kenyan Olympic trials, coach James Li offered Lagat a scholarship.

To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, it turned out to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Unlike many college coaches who simply wring all the talent out of their athletes during their four years in school to extract the maximum number of points at meets, Li realized that Lagat's ultimate achievements would come after graduation. "Coach Li said, 'Run seriously in college, but this isn't what we're pointing for,'" Lagat recalls, adding, "Of course, that didn't stop him from having me run three races in a single meet sometimes."

Despite a simpatico coach, Lagat's first months in Pullman, Wash., made him wonder if he'd made the right choice. "I had never been someplace that cold," he recalls. "I remember thinking, 'Why did I do this?' But getting through that made me stronger."

It didn't help that Lagat arrived at WSU slightly injured and missed most of his first cross country season. But there was a silver lining to that cloud, too, one that has paid the biggest dividend in his life so far.

While he was in the training room for treatment, Lagat's eye was drawn to Gladys Tom, a pretty student trainer working with one of the other teams. Lagat eventually got her phone number and asked her out.

"She was very professional, and said she didn't date athletes," he says. "We eventually would go to dinner or a movie with other people, but we didn't go on a real date until I finished school." The two married in 2004 and had their first child, Miika, in 2006.

Fast Times and Trouble

In 1999, with the Olympic goal becoming more immediate, Lagat gave up his final year of eligibility to turn pro and gain international experience racing in Europe. He lowered his 1500m PR almost four seconds to 3:30.56, finishing the season ranked fourth in the world in that event. In Sydney, he took the bronze medal behind Noah Ngeny and Hicham el Guerrouj. The following year, he placed second at the world championships after running 3:26.34, the third-fastest 1500m in history.

But the seemingly storybook path hit a major detour the following summer. Just before the 2003 world championships in Paris, Lagat was told one of his urine samples had tested positive for EPO, and he was suspended pending a test of a second sample. Worse than missing the meet was the cloud of suspicion Lagat had to live under while he awaited the second set of results.

"It was devastating," he says. "It's the worst thing an athlete can go through." Five weeks later, the "B" sample came back negative, exonerating him, but Lagat wasn't quite ready to say, 'Thank you' and move on. "I wanted to restore my reputation, but more important, get the testing procedure changed, so the same thing wouldn't happen to another athlete." He sued the IAAF and World Anti-Doping Agency, forcing changes in the testing process to make it more reliable.

Lagat was clear to compete in the Athens Olympics, but not without more intrigue. He found himself as a man without a country, or, more accurately, one with two of them.

Early in his career at WSU, Lagat decided that he wanted to make the U.S. his home, and began applying for citizenship. His case went quicker than most, and he became a citizen on May 7, 2004. Rather than celebrating like most new Americans, however, he had to keep his status secret in order to run in the Olympics, since international rules require a three-year waiting period before competing for a new country.

Since Kenya prohibits dual citizenship, Lagat was technically wearing the uniform of a country he no longer belonged to. Carrying the secret didn't slow him, as he and el Guerrouj waged a no-holds-barred 1500 in Athens, the Moroccan finally getting his Olympic gold by .12 seconds. Right after the finish, Lagat called his mother in Kenya. "She told me I had won bronze and silver, next time I would win gold."

Lagat had to wait three years for that chance. In the intervening time he set American records at 1500m (3:29:30 outdoors, 3:33.34 indoors) and the mile (3:49.89 indoors), waiting for 2007 and his first chance to represent his adopted country in international competition.

The Dream Double

His double wins in Osaka are now part of track and field history. After a 1500 semifinal that he described as "brilliant," Lagat found himself living one of his racing nightmares in the final. "With 150 to go it seemed like I was in trouble, really boxed in, but I was feeling very composed," he recalls. "I knew at some point I needed to get out, but just then Alan [Webb] pushed through and it gave me the opening I needed. I knew if I could use my kick no one would beat me."

Looking up at the big screen, Lagat realized with 10 meters to go the gold was his. "I wanted to win so badly, but I didn't know how it would feel when I finally did," he says. "I was sort of in disbelief -- it didn't really sink in until later."

That euphoria helped carry him through the opening round of the 5,000m the next day. "I was still running on adrenaline. I figured I'd done everything I set out to do in the 1500, so this was just for fun."

In the final, the rest of the field inexplicably played right into Lagat's hands, dawdling through the opening laps and turning it into a kicker's race. "I kept saying to myself, 'Someone's going to go after 1K.' Then it was 2K and no one had gone, and I began to think, 'This could be mine.' When I saw four laps to go, I knew there was no way they could beat me."

Lagat now faces the challenge of trying to repeat that magic in Beijing. But while he may have become fully American, in both law and lifestyle, he still views running with a peace and equanimity foreign to most U.S. athletes. Instead of seeking and striving for records and medals, Lagat allows the times and titles to come to him. In that respect, perhaps he resembles not so much a Zen Buddhist monk, but the fictional Jedi of Star Wars fame, following the admonition of the wise and wizened Yoda: "Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."

Clearly, for Bernard Lagat, simply doing, without the wasted effort of excessive trying, has allowed him to live out the race of his dreams.

Training

James Li's first meeting with Bernard Lagat wasn't an auspicious one.

"I remember my first sight of him was limping up to me and saying, 'Coach, I'm hurt,'" Li says, recalling the fall of 1996. Right then Li might have questioned his decision to bring Lagat from Kenya to Washington State University on a scholarship, but another occurrence, from the end of that season, proved the wisdom of that decision. Having missed the regular cross country season with shin splints, Lagat began jogging two weeks before the Pac 10 conference championships. "He just ran around the track -- 10, 15 minutes at first," Li says. "After two weeks he was up to 20 minutes, maybe around low 5-minute pace near the end." Lagat felt he was healthy enough to race, and wound up finishing seventh, running in the mid-24s for 5 miles. "I realized right then this guy was pretty special," says Li.

Ever since, the coach-athlete relationship the two have enjoyed has been pretty special, too. Special, and successful. Li says the secret to such success is just basic consistency and common sense. "The main thing is that, after that first year, we've been able to keep him healthy," says Li. "As long as he's running and not forced to stop by injuries, he's going to do pretty well."

"You have to pay attention to what an athlete can handle,"Li says. "During that first year we figured out this guy was not going to be able to handle really high mileage -- when we'd try to increase it his shins would hurt. So we had to figure out some other ways to keep him healthy and running."

The answer has been less mileage, but at a higher intensity. According to frequent training partner Abdi Abdirahman, "Every single workout has a purpose. He never goes out 'just to run.'"

Intensity, Purpose and Feel

Lagat trains for strength and endurance, more like a 5,000m runner than a miler, at least early in the season. "Five years ago I talked to Kip [Lagat's nickname] and said, 'What's the difference between you and el Gerrouj?'" says Li. "The difference between their best 5,000s was 12:50 and 13:14. So he needed to get stronger, to be able to have the strength to use his speed.

"Although I have a reputation of not being a high-mileage guy, every runner needs to build a big aerobic base," Li says. "My philosophy is to look at your athletes and see how much they need. You can achieve it with lower mileage but higher intensity -- I don't know the physiological basis for it, but I've learned it along the way, firsthand."

Indeed, Li's coaching method is very much "by feel" rather than following a pre-determined schedule. "I don't want to be a slave to whatever is on the paper," he says. "We have a general idea of what we want to accomplish, but there are any number of ways to achieve it. Say we go to the track to do fairly long distance repeats, something fairly stressful -- it really doesn't make a difference whether you run 800, 700 or 1,000 meters. If we need to do something shorter and quicker, it doesn't make a difference if it's 200 or 300. I like to make that kind of decision at the time. Although we'll repeat the same type of workouts, very seldom is it ever the exact same workout. I try to inject some variety so they don't get bored."

Li and Lagat have hit upon a winning formula that they'll repeat this year. "After the summer season ends he'll get a pretty long break in the fall," says Li. "Then we like to work in 10-week training blocks. He'll do one of them, then race some indoor meets, then do another 10-week segment before outdoors. Generally speaking, the segments are pretty similar, although indoors isn't as intense as outdoors -- we try to build the intensity over the course of the year."

The pre-competition training is nothing revolutionary. "We do the same things everyone else does," Li says. "Long runs, hill work, tempo runs. We'll do more long runs early on, but even in the middle of the European track season we'll do a 60- to 70-minute long run between meets." Noting that it's hard for Lagat to run slower than 5:15 pace, Li says, "To many people they'd be long tempo runs. I can't say everyone should be training this way."

Early in the cycle, the emphasis is on short (3-4 mile) or long (6-7 mile) tempo runs and longer repeats, which are never run on the track, but on roads, often up a gradual but steady incline. Closer to competition, they will move to the track for shorter, quicker work to prepare for racing. "We generally do that for about two weeks," Li says. "If Kip can get in three to four good track sessions, he's in shape to run 3:53 for the mile."

Li feels it's possible, even preferable, to race yourself into peak shape. "Racing is a very important component of training," he says. "It helps you work on your intensity. It doesn't have to burn you out -- if you approach it right, it can have a tremendous training effect."

One of Lagat's greatest gifts is the ability to perform well in competition. "Sometimes you get athletes who can train really well but can't perform in meets," Li says. "Racing at a higher level than you train, that's what I call talent."

Knowing this, Li realizes that much of his job consists of keeping his athlete healthy and mentally enthusiastic, then turning him loose on race day. "It sounds pretty simple," he says. "Shoot, it is simple."